Sprache wechseln

Normal start of the day. Breakfast, late departure. With only some liters of fuel and a bit of water we go into the desert. There are not many fuel stations. Some of them have only gas, some of them are out of fuel, some of them have been closed a long time ago. Even the Scots use all of their 40l to get around. We have no choice other than trying to go as far as possible and hope for a fuel station with fuel. It is already late evening when we found the Scots again. Some meters off the road, stuck in the sand. No way for four people to get their car out. After a while some other teams come along and with combined efforts we can free the car. We convoy towards Bukhara. But the good road ends and due to the darkness we decide to camp in the desert. An awesome evening, still thinking about our lack of fuel and shrinking water supplies.

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Hi guys,

what´s up?

We have already elephant Skins on our Butts from driving and not a single donation for coolearth?

Our Goal is to get 1000 punds for them and we have only 1/3 at half of the trip!

The Money is not for us, but the donation link goes directly to the coolearth page.

Get active, donate. this will motivate us to do the Pamirs to get some great Picture to share with you.

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When we wake up the jeep of the locals is already in the middle of the camp. Some of the others tell us that the official guides
charge 20 dollars and that the road the the crater is not suitable for normal cars. Being a bit scared of the local guys waiting for us we decided to take the opportunity to leave the place with the others before getting into troubles. So close, but we do not the the crater.
Heading for the border. Only less than 300km away, a whole day, no problem. OK, a bit of a problems. The road starts to get worse,
worse than Georgia, and later it gets really bad. Avarage speed reduced to something between 20-30 km/h.
At the end of the day we arrive at the border, which was closed 10 minutes before for the night. The dutch team Golden Panda, which passed us a
couple of kilometers before had the same problem. We make the best of it, go back to town to get some beers and
spent a decent evening in our private refugee border camp. Asking about the opening time next morning leads to various results. Everything between 6 and 10 is now possible.

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The day starts with a full success: The border opens at 9, we have only 200 meters to the first gate and we are the first ones.
5 hours later we leave the border at the Uzbekistan side. Thanks god only 20 kilometers to the next city where we take a hotel.
We get our rims fixed, have internet, get a quite reasonable lunch and a quiet rest of the day. Dinner with a Scotch team residing at the
same hotel and now a last beer in the room while typing.

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Leaving again eary morning around 10 we are doing the last bit of Iran towards the Turkmenistan border. Since we are fed up with cucumbers we do not have breakfast - a bad mistake as we will learn later.
Reaching the border we are sent force and back a couple of times to get the right papers with the right stamps before
we reach the main border building. A guy takes immediately care of our carnet- Later we see that he works close together
with the customs agent scanning the car. At the end we bribe 20 dollars to avoid having our car taken apart...
A bit later at the Turkmenistan side it starts quite well and an hour later we only have to wait for the lady from the bank to come back from lunch in
order to pay 115 dollars entrance fee (insurance, fuel taxes, processing fees, current date/time, temperature).
She comes back after almost another hour and we can pay immediately. Time to go back to the passport controll to get our final
stamp. Would be too easy. Power outage at the complete border building. Another two hours until somebody produces a can of engine oil for the aggregate.
After feeding it bit by bit they managed finally to get the machine started and power was back.
A bit frustrating that the guy stamping our passports does not even need light or a computer to do so...
And then the descent to Asgabat. Escaping the hills we enter a city with a impressive skyline. Massive buildings, beautiful
street decorations. You really can see the message "you can see how great we are" out of this environment.
Quite a hazzle to do all the stuff needed. Getting food, fuel, more food, something to drink - we are looking forwarad to the Door to hell party - and getting out of the city. Loosing about 2 hours, we are finally on the right road and decide to reach for the party. A fatal mistake.
In the pitch dark night, on a road with no markings, you only sense the edge of the roads by the slightly brighter shade
of the bushes from the headlight, I hit a major pothole. Result: 2 broken rims.
More time lost with changing tires we aproach the door to hell. Being picked up by a group of locals looking for tourists
to lead the to the gas crater, we find at least the junction, but when the tell us to lead us further for a "fee" of
40 dollars we rejected and decide to spend the night near a camp of other ralliers having a similar experience with the
local guys. These spent the night also close to us. Quite suspect... so we stay up quite long to see what they do
before we finally decide that they really only wait there to be the first ones next morning and not trying to rob the camp.

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